VEDA

VEDA

That’s Vlogging Every Day in April. If you follow the Riot channel, you may have noticed a lot more updates than our usual vlogs, videogames, and podcasts. That’s because it’s VEDA, and although VEDA has been abandoned by my genius crush Hank Green, likely because he’s on tour all month, I’m still vlogging every day in April. Sometimes it’s short, sometimes it’s videogames, sometimes it’s music, but it’s always something. I’ve been doing it for the past two years, and it never fails to remind me of a few things that I want to share.

Making stuff is not hard

I love making stuff. Videos, websites, search strings, solutions, notions, relationships, whatever. I often fret about if I can make something, what people will think about it, whether it communicates what I need it to, and whether a million people would do it better, but from the outset, it often just seems hard. Videos take software and cameras and lighting and stands, there’s time in filming and time in editing, the time it takes to upload and post, and then promoting content and replying to comments. It’s hard,but it’s not that hard. You learn it a little at a time, and when one bit becomes second nature, you move onto the next. Workflows are develop, and then improved, and then made complicated by new goals, and then further improved. Circle of life. or something.

Maintaining things takes discipline

It does take discipline though, and VEDA certainly pushes that. something has to go up every day. This pushes me to plan farther in advance than I normally would, and helps me maintain my disciplines. I love that it’s in the spring, where I often need it most, emerging from the doldrums of winter. It encourages me to push myself and cultivate that discipline, to learn and try new things, in the same way that blogging made me a more disciplined writer. Mostly.

I have more time than I think

In the world where everyone is busy, I am also often busy. i work on a lot of stuff and want to be in a lot of places. I am often not in all of the places I want to be in, partly because of the aforementioned stuff, and partly because I also like to do nothing and play videogames. Mostly the latter. But I can find time to think of, write, edit, and create a video for every day if I put my mind to it. I can find the time, and if I’m not too busy for that, then I’m not too busy for lots of the other things and people in my lfie, far less than I imagine. It’s just become so easy to say that we don’t have time for things, and all rsvps are given with the best intentions. Now every time I think about whether I have time for something, I look at VEDA and think “I had time for that. Where can I dig some up?”

Things do not always have to be perfect

This. I wanted to make the perfect video before I could even imagine what it was (it is fire-breathing kittens playing with tacos). I wanted to wait for the perfect time in my life, when I had things under control, when I knew everything there was to know about it, so each one would be majestic and insightful. But this is better. The imperfections are sometimes the best parts, the slips and catches, the misheard lyrics, and the humanity of the whole thing. Perfect is the enemy of done, and in VEDA, done is what counts.

I need to leave my house more

I spend way too much time at this desk. I like it. I built it, but sometimes I need to get away from it. VEDA is a great excuse to go outside, breathe outside air, see friends, and do things I’ve always been meaning to do. Otherwise job and videogames will eat me.